Miner Wars 2081

There’s not a lot to do in Space Engineers, but this is the first Early Access game I’ve played in a while that works, and, well, isn’t completely broken. In fact, it’s given me a bit of hope: the content is light, and it has crashed a few times, but it doesn’t feel like a game being held together by good intentions and hope. It’s the kind of offering you might pay for. And it’s a surprisingly slick demonstration of building and destruction. In space.> (more…)

We are happy to inform you that Space Engineers will be available through Steam Early Access on October 23, 2013 for the starting price $14.99.

New “crash test” alpha video has been released. This footage demonstrates all sorts of damage and destruction possible in Space Engineers – small and large ships crash on an asteroid or station, two large ships crash together and more:

Customers who will purchase Space Engineers on Early Access will have the chance to play the game and become an active part of the development by providing valuable feedback to the developers and help them improve and finalize the game.

As with all Steam Early Access games, this won’t be the final version of Space Engineers but an ongoing development project. Players who will decide to join the Early Access version should understand that the game is still in test mode and many things will be missing or may change during this period. The game will receive frequent updates.

The initial release on Early Access will focus on core mechanics: creative mode building, physics simulation and destruction. Additional features will be released in following updates.

Prior to the Early Access launch day, a walk-through “early tutorial” video will be released. This video will demonstrate the state of Space Engineers on day one. Customers who are willing to purchase the game will see what they are getting.

Further information will be released as well: system requirements and a list of features split into three categories: finished features, work in progress and temporary disabled.

For more details on the development of Space Engineers, follow Marek Rosa’s blog: http://blog.marekrosa.org. Marek’s latest posts focused on artificial gravity and building modes present in Space Engineers.

Space Engineers is in alpha stage of development. Everything in the game is subject to change.

Space Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction and maintenance of space works. Players build space ships and space stations of various sizes and utilization (civil and military), pilot ships and perform asteroid mining.

It has been almost two months since we released Miner Wars 2081 and it’s time for updates and some recapitulation.

Today we released a new patch that adds:- Offline single-player for Steam version of Miner Wars 2081 – in other words, now you don’t have to be connected to internet and logged into our servers to play the campaign.- Optimizations and bug fixes, more info: http://www.minerwars.com/CurrentBuildFeatures.aspx- Two new add-ons available for free as part of Miner Wars 2081 installation:o Cheats – infinite ammo, immortality, skip to any mission, and more (Ctrl+F1 in game)o 2.5D Experiment - multiplayer 2.5D add-on for MW 2081 - available as a set of 2.5D death-match maps (all 2.5D sectors have 2.5D as a prefix)

We want to address an important issue many players have reported - low FPS (bad performance) even on computers that should run the game smoothly. After some investigation we have found the cause – it happens on some computers that have one integrated GPU (graphic card) and one external and more powerful GPU. Expected behavior in this case is that driver/OS switches to the more powerful GPU once Miner Wars 2081 is launched and game runs smoothly. Due to unknown reasons, this doesn’t happen on certain systems. We are working on a fail-safe solution – until then please do the following: disable integrated GPU (best in BIOS) or check our trouble shooting page: http://www.minerwars.com/Troubleshooting.aspx

Another issue that needs our response is the accusation of censorship about DRM in Miner Wars. I believe this happened after we deleted one offensive and untruthful post on our Youtube channel. We have deleted posts for reasons that were not related to DRM. If we did delete any comment on our forum, it’s only in extreme cases and I know that we deleted only a handful of comments in the whole history of Miner Wars.

I can assure everyone that we are not censoring posts, if those posts don’t substantially break discussion rules. We are definitely not censoring posts that say “This game has DRM” – proof at our Steam forum which is full of these discussions and we didn’t mind them: http://steamcommunity.com/app/223430/discussions/

There is much more to say and I will continue next week on my blog. To everyone who is interested in what we are working on right now - we are rewriting our rendering engine from XNA to DirectX and then we want to optimize it further. Meanwhile, I am working on the design document for our next unannounced project!

Last but not least, I am happy to announce that last week we crossed boundary of 50,000 sales. This number is far more than what we expected. Thank you!

The best sort of source code is available source code. So it’s splendid news to hear that the developers behind Miner Wars 2081, Keen Software House, have made the code for both the full game and the engine available for all purchasers of the game – although for modding only. So that’s all 360,000 lines of code for you to stare at in bewilderment. Or if you’re not me, to start fiddling with.

This game was picked with help from the Steam Community. To vote for other games youd like to see made available on Steam, please visit Steam Greenlight.

Miner Wars 2081 is a 6DOF action-survival space-shooter simulation-game set in the year 2081, 10 years after the destruction of all planetary objects in the Solar System. You operate an advanced mining ship in a fully destructible and open-world environment, which remains persistent as you complete missions or play online with others. Realism and survival are key aspects of gameplay. Inventory and the way you use resources such as fuel, ammunition, oxygen, ore, and weapons are important when surrounded by dozens of warring factions.